Northern Ireland head coach Kenny Shiels said that he was impressed with Durham midfielder Sarah McFadden during the nation’s 4-0 defeat to England at Wembley last night.
McFadden played in a deeper role than she does for her club, she operated at centre-back and was tasked with keeping one of the world’s best forwards quiet in Ellen White. England’s third-highest goalscorer failed to score with McFadden playing her part in some resolute Northern Irish defending.
When speaking to FAWSL Full-Time in his post-match press conference, Shiels said that McFadden had performed well when coming up against full-time professional England players.
“For the first hour, she was outstanding,” Shiels said. “Like all the players, if you are having a foot-race with someone who is full-time professional at running, at tackling, at shooting, all the aspects of the game and we are playing against that and these girls are doing their day jobs then coming here to this fantastic venue and you’re having to compete against that – for an hour, we we’re very competitive. They were worried but they had the appropriate bench and we didn’t.
“I have to say that Sarah McFadden in that hour was outstanding. You could see her legs going, you could see Rachel Furness’ legs going, Marissa Callaghan, they were all on their knees.
“For England to be playing against a team who are part-time and have lost so many players to injuries and ACLs…we contained England for periods. Equally, they were unfortunate that they didn’t score on a couple of occasions in the first half, you have to take that into consideration but then that was balanced out by the goal that they scored to break it when it was a cross to the back post.
“England deserved to win, we were unable to compete with them in certain quarters so we tried to camouflage that.”
It was an energy-sapping occasion for Northern Ireland at Wembley but The Green and White Army must pick themselves up quickly with a home fixture against Austria up next on Tuesday. Shiels said that he will need to pick the players in the best physical condition for that match.
He said “It’s going to be difficult (ensuring that players are rested), we have to pick the team that is fresh. We are at home against Austria, who are a fantastic team by the way, and we know what a tall order that will be for us.
“We just want to try and be competitive. It is important that we try to be competitive in our group games and tonight, I thought that we were competitive but when the substitutions came on, you could see their fitness and their strength.
“If I was summing it up as a neutral, as someone who is not involved in the two camps, I would say that their superior fitness didn’t win the match, they had to bring on the fresh legs as well. I felt that when you are second to the ball in second phases of the game, it negates what you can do but at the start of the second half, we had two very good chances which we didn’t have in the first so they were very, very worried at that time.”
Northern Ireland’s fourth FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia New Zealand 2023 qualifying match against Austria in Belfast kicks-off at 7pm on Tuesday evening.
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